With the release of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, the DOW: Anthology also came out. For just $99.95nz this is a great deal that throws all three Dawn of War games (DOW, Winter Assault, Dark Crusade) into a single large box.

I’ve played friend’s copies of DOW and WA for years at local LAN games so couldn’t resist grabbing all three at once and picked up the anthology late last week. I’ve managed to get a bit of play over the weekend and am really enjoying the Dark Crusade Campaign. It’s a simple map based campaign, exactly the sort of thing you’d play with friends on the tabletop but it works suprisingly well when combined with the excellent Dawn of War RTS engine.

Reviewers have given DOW:DC high points all round (click the image to go to the Meta Critic page), largely I expect because of this new campaign mode which differs from the slightly tedious linear campaigns of DOW and Winter Assault. I’m only playing it on Standard and am still getting solidly challenged which is a good feeling when dealing with AI players.

Although possibly that reflects my own skills more than anything! I generally loathe PC RTS games and the DOW family is really the only RTS game I’ve played in the last three years.

Necrons and (boo hiss) Tau arrive in Dark Crusade and I have to say the Necrons feel a tad overpowered. However like all of the races in DOW they’re very true to their tabletop originals – being a small but very tough army. The ‘Get Back Up’ rule is still in effect and it’s more terrifying on the PC because you do actually see the damned Necron Warriors get back up!

I’m enjoying hunting the Tau in the campaign as well, at this point I can’t quite bring myself to play them though…

Here’s another tutorial about getting a realistic looking weathering effect on 15mm tanks using a mix of enamel and acrylic paints an humble toothpaste!

I’m very tempted to try this with a grey enamel base coat and a dunkelgelb top coat for my unpainted DAK Flames of War Tank company.

Also interesting to compare this with an earlier tutorial I stumbled across.

Via the Flames of War Forum.

Thanks to Phil over at PitYak Studios selling me a second hand compressor and a gentleman on TradeMe selling cheap Chinese ‘Super Air Gun’ brand airbrushes I am now the proud owner of a $200nz airbrush setup.

I haven’t tried it out yet but hope to do so this weekend. After some test sprays the first serious experiment will simply be base coating the remaining four Crescent Root Studio 28mm Middle Eastern buildings I have left to paint.

I doubt the brush is capable of fine detail (it only cost $95nz after all) but I’m hoping it’ll considerably speed up laying down the base coats of colour on terrain, vehicles and figures. The instructions are full of amusing Engrish too which is an extra bonus.

On the advice of this page I’ve also picked up some cheapo car windscreen fluid for diluting and Windex for cleaning up afterwards. Phil as well as various gaming mates also recommend ‘Floetrol’ which is a DIY acrylic paint extender. I’ll see how I go with windscreen fluid to start with and maybe grab some Floetrol next time I’m at Bunnings.

I’ve mentioned Pardulon’s excellent looking Fantasy terrain in the past, but it seems they now sell 28mm scale Industrial resin buildings as well.

Two or three of these buildings would be ideal for a .45 Adventures dock-side setting. They’re a little pricey but I see they also sell individual brick side walls and facades which could be a cheaper way of decorating vanilla foam card buildings.

One thing that’s not immediately clear though is if the walls are only detailed on one side or both? Anybody who has used these care to comment?

Via Tabletop Gaming News.

Last night we played the second scenario in the Pulp .45 Adventure campaign I’m running at the moment. It was a slightly modified version of Chapter 1 of ‘The Golden Calf’ campaign from the Amazing War Stories expansion.

An American PI, British secret agents and a group of dastardly Germans (with zombie troopers in tow) searched the streets of Cairo for a native guide to lead them to the lost tomb hinted at in the first scenario!

Fortunately I had the good sense to hide TWO native guides in the dusty houses because while the British quickly discovered one guide, the Germans just as quickly dispatched him with a burst of submachine gun fire. Typical behaviour from jackbooted fascists!

Although it turned out to be quite a tactical move since the Germans discovered the second guide hiding on a rooftop later on and proceeded to hussle him into a nearby truck at gunpoint. The rest of the scenario was spent filling Nazi zombies with lead in an effort to bring them down. Something like 20 shots must have gone into each before one was felled. The second was killed with a fearsome blow to the head while covering its master’s escape…

I was gratified to see that the players heeded my call for painted figures. Ahem, although I myself only managed to paint four of the eight Crescent Root Studios 28mm Middle Eastern buildings for the scenario. Still they were sufficient to provide a small suburb to hunt through.

Now I find myself having to construct an Egyptian Tomb with minimal effort and paint at least three figures for the next fortnightly game. I’ll either re-use my Museum pieces, or hopefully there’s some nice paper terrain I can buy from RPGNow.com that’ll do for a Tomb floorplan…

I dropped into ModelAir in Newmarket this weekend to pick up some paint with my three year old son in tow. It is a little cruel taking him into shop packed with ‘toys’ and only spending $50 for myself so some bribery was required! Usually he goes for the Matchbox cars but this time I managed to convince him that 50c gliders were a better option.

I’d forgotten how much fun these cheapo gliders-dressed-as-fighters are and we spent over an hour throwing them around the front garden yesterday. Modern gliders are full colour printed foam card too which is a cut above the older single colour balsa gliders we had as kids. Youth of today eh? Spoiled I say!

I also noticed ModelAir had the next two issues of Model Military International on their counter, so I grabbed Issue #5. They’re presumably air shipped in as they were $2nz more than the normal $13.70nz I pay. I was briefly tempted by the 1:48th Tamiya kits they had on display, but I think Acorn Models might be a touch cheaper for the same kits.

Finally I had a quick discussion about the Battlefront resin 1:144th aircraft models as the gentleman behind the counter does some pre-packaging clean up work for Battlefront, and had a set of ‘first cast’ resins of the planes. I must say the models were a lot more detailed than I expected. I think the paint jobs on the Flames of War site don’t actually do them that much justice. Might have to pick up a flight of Stukas at some point for that desert airfield I’ve been building for over a year now…

Ok a little off topic, but here’s some lovely (relatively speaking) Halloween Pumpkin Sculpture from Villafane Studios (warning annoying Flash front page), with a how-to photo tutorial even!

We’re not quite as Halloween crazy here in New Zealand as people are in the States. We’ll do a bit of trick and treatin’ in the street with the kids but nobody wears costumes to work or anything. I tell you it was a bit of an eye opener catching the Silicon Valley Light Rail during Halloween while I was working over there several years ago!

Via Boing Boing.